I𝑰. ▬▬✧*:.｡

, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒅𝒖𝒓𝒆

𝕿here are two times when Carl Grimes has escaped and slipped through the grasp of Death's fingers like soft, dry sand. The first time occurred while trying to save a dear friend of his after she fled from what she feared the most; walkers. The second times betided after another friend was ready to cope with what he feared and hated the most; Rick Grimes.

Both times, he had woken up to the cerulean abyss sinking into his father's gaze. They would unfailingly be there casting at him with refreshing waves of fatherly comfort, and tiding over, and dragging in their passing spoiling shards and rocks of disorientation and fear off the shoreline. Every splashes of salty waves, were like deposing a gentle blanket strewing shells of alleviation that the boy would be embraced with great relief.

This third time, Carl awoke with a jolt, but they weren't present. His state was frantic, his eye unfocused; darted all over the place not knowing where to land on. The motions of his gaze were so rapid that each outline, colors, light were ripped from the constant pivoting movement of his head. A vertigo of stroboscopic images and fathomless shapes layered upon his vision. His head relentlessly turning, searching for them: The eyes and their soothing azure shade. They were nowhere to be seen. No even a trace.

Instead, the pair of gloved fingers loomed into his view again, dancing over him.

Uncontrollable stress caused him to shoot into an upright sitting position, but his attempt was a pathetic fail. Strenuous hands were holding him down like adamantine chains. They were strong, rough but a ting of reluctance spilled through them. Carl's eye remained wide, a pearl—shaped tear scintillating as it clung to the edge.

He cast his gaze over to the person who held his back stuck to the mattress beneath him.

It was a man, with broad shoulders and a colossal build. His complexion was a dark brown shade. A film of water tiding over the topaz—brown glow of the man's eyes made them slant at Carl with pencils of sympathy and shame. A field of thick darkish hairs clung to the lower portion of his face, climbing up to his ears. It gave a profundity and structure to his facial shape, and therefore concealing a certain innocence displayed by the chubbiness of his cheeks.

"It's okay." He mumbled. The delicacy and thickness spilling from his tone tinkled Carl's eardrums with a penetrating feeling of familiarity. He has heard the same voice earlier. Yet, this wasn't enough.

Familiarity wasn't enough for him; it wasn't what he wished. Familiarity was the bicephalous concept he depreciated the most. Brut knowledge meeting dull puzzlement. Which most likely means, a part of his questions would be unanswered, buried, thrown away like the last, soggy, limp fry you left out in the bottom of an oleaginous red box. Familiarity was a fuselage of warmth and frigidity that would only breed a mayhem of thunderous roar and blinding spears to his head. Familiarity was the worst feeling he could sense, and Carl Grimes was done with this.

He needed more than this. He needed his family. It's not okay, a capricious, childish voice shouted inside of him. With deep breaths and a rise of revolt, he sat up. As soon as he did, the boy already found his body smacked back onto the bed.

"Jones, hold him down." The words were collected and muffled yet, choking into a trembling and billowing plume of impatient and disconcerted dust. Then, Carl's attention swiped down to where he located the voice.

He wore rectangular, matte—black framed glasses that safely crested upon the hillock of his nose. His dark gaze pierced through the translucent lenses as he drove a full concentration to the work that was progressing within the tight locomotion of his hands. He wielded tweezers; threads soaked with blood that spewed from the boy's wound. He also wore those latex gloves— fucking gloves— which was enough for Carl to deduct that he had to be a doctor.

"Wait— what have you done to me?" The boy's voice crackled. like arid clay soil against the scorching beat of the sun and it hurt, badly. His forehead commenced to fold with emotional creases, skin perspiring heavy beads of fiery uncertainty.

Carl began to writhe against the solid grasp of the man he learnt to be called Jones. Despite the strength he had managed to gather, his attempt was far from being effective. And to his surprise, the grip of Jones gradually loosened from around Carl's members.

"Am I talking to a wall? I told you to keep him still!"

"We can't do anything of he keeps moving!"

"Not if you make him stop."

"So what do you want me to do? Knock him out like she did? The kid's upset. He needs time to process!"

"He needs medical care."

"Oh please, shut up! You only have one last suture left to do!"

"If you can't do this then tell me so I can finally call someone el—"

The words immediately ceased as the soft clank of gun whistled in the doctor's eardrums.

The two wranglers spun their heads to Carl. Only the strangled and laboring sound of his heaves filling the quietness that had settled above them. He hoisted himself on a single elbow, whilst his other hand was pointing a gun at the men. Jones glanced down at his holster, stupor breaking into the tight space of his eyes when he realized he had been robbed so easily by the weak boy sat before him.

With blood slowly dripping from his skin and pain crawling in his muscles, he managed to work his way out of the bed. Bare feet meeting the coolness of the ground, he shuddered slightly. Yet, he forced a stony and brave expression to film over his face.

"Outside, now." His voice, weak but sharp as a squeaky reel. They shared a look, slowly raising their hands in surrender.

"Look kid, I don't think it's the best moment for you to fight us. Especially when you don't have to since we have not even the tiniest intention of harming you." The doctor spoke. Holding his palm firmly against his injury, Carl pushed the man on the chest with the bore of his gun silently instructing him to step toward the door. Which he did.

Leaving the previous brightness of the room, they stepped into a cold and dim corridor that seemed as dark as a mineshaft.

Pipes and locked doors lined the walls and Carl almost flinched at the thudding of the lightbulbs overhead flaring into life automatically one after the other in a perfect phosphorescent chain. A last switch, and the low humming of the strobes harmonizing with the eerie rushing sound that traveled through the metal pipes filled the narrow area.

"The exit. Where is it?" It was almost a whisper. The duo moved forward longing the hallway and leading the boy down to the nearest stairs. They turned a final corner into a large white—painted steel door. There was a wide panel above it with the word CAFETERIA written across it, and Carl suddenly stopped.

"Wait, no—" Before he could even speak any more words, the door was swung wide open.

The first thing that hit him, was the intoxicating trace of warm food tickling in his nose as he drew in a large puff of air. The wide place roared with activity. The brouhaha of chatting, laughing and the resonance of cutlery clattering together buzzed loudly in his head. There were rows and rows of varnish—coated, wooden tables. A massive plume of steam hung up above, leaving an opaque blur onto the ivory tiled walls and windows all around. He really was in a cafeteria.

His skin felt even more damp, moisture giving an itchy feeling on the area underneath the bandage that was wrapped around his face. A silhouette in motion slipped into his peripheral vision. A man, with a bright smile twitching up on his face, was approaching them definitely not aware of what was going on.

"Hey, doc. Why don't you join—holy shit!" And it was just a matter of one or two seconds before weapons and stunned looks were drawing right to his direction as though his whole body were a living, powerful magnet.

"Everybody calm down !"

"I thought you buried him!"

"Who the hell is that?"

"Again?"

"Haha, now I know why she took him with her!"

Two piercing gunshots in the air. And the chorus of voices immediately abated, eyes staring at Carl Grimes with startled gape.

"Out, now." Carl pressed, fighting the urge to cough as he dragged his look over to the crowd before him. The icy shock finally wearing off, he gripped in the doctor coat as he lead the fuming head of the gun inches away from his throat. Truth to be told, Carl assessed him more as a support to remained himself balanced than a way of exerting any kind of pressure on the people around. And both ways worked.

Because, after a nod of the bulky man, one by one, people evacuated. They exited the large space to an impressively towering, overly ornate double door which overlooked the outside world.

Carl followed, holding the stiff frame of the doctor as though he was the lifebelt that kept him on the surface. When his feet crossed the threshold, petals of sweet cool air slipped in him deposing on his lungs healing kisses.

His cornflower eye glazed out of the whiteness of his skin as he scanned his surroundings. The sky, innocent of the clouds, was an intense blue animated by the jovial passing of Chickadees and withered old leaves. There was a scent of earth, greenery wafting around. When he pulled his attention down to earth, the ether was being cut off by two uptilted buildings of an old colonial architecture enclosed within a series of concrete barriers. The walls stood so high, that even the emergent canopy of the forest outside was hardly emerging from above them. Taking a couple inches of extra twigs for their furtive eyes to take a peek inside the glen.

The structures standing on either side faced each other's with an eerie resemblance. Both had their windows barred, their panes dulled by moss and dust wash, and their one—to—four stories piled on one another. However, an obvious, clashing contrast couldn't be avoided by the bewilderment flaring from the teenager's look.

On the right side, sat a pleasant looking edifice of red bricks and well—sculpted trims while on the left side he only saw a sinister darkness rising up against the colorful scenery. There, laid an unwelcoming overlapping of charcoals—bricks. Half of it had been destroyed. Like bombshells were launched onto it and took a mouthful of the jail—looking construction, an enormous portion fell apart into an avalanche of littered remains of ebony ashes and chunks of disintegrated concrete.

Beyond the large number of strangers packed in front of him, he would've sworn acres of plane viridescent grassland were deployed in the center of the site. With a weight hammering in his stomach, his feet finally moved in weak, small gait. Each steps making his toes blench against the touch of the pebbles—encrusted hard ground.

As he fully turned, his look gaped at the building he had just been emerging from. His grasp onto his hostage slowly unleashing. What shocked him the most wasn't the fact that the facade looked as identical as the previous redbrick building. Indeed, what makes his eye staring at it with a bulging expression of arrant dismay were the metallic, moss—infested sign letters protruding from the wall above the door he passed through.

Asworth Psychiatric Institute of Pennsylvania

WARD A

"What the hell—"

He was interrupted by a low, sharp voice of which sound snaked up to his spine and peaked out his bare skin in tiny prickles. "You have an arrow right in the back of your head ready to blow your skull like a whole damn cake."

Carl lingered motionless. The same noise as Daryl Dixon's legendary crossbow sounded behind him: It was the creaking sound of a string being pulled farther and farther. A chilly, unsettling wave pumped through his veins. "Drop it." She ordered in a resolute yet threatening tone.

"No." His rasp sounded like jagged knifes. He couldn't speak without sensing bits of his throat falling in flakes painfully like cheap paint peeling off, but he kept talking anyway, "Not until you let me out. What is this place? And why am I here?—" he was cut again.

"You have two options."

"First one. We can wait all day until you bleed to death." He heard her draw in a sharp breath.

"Which is, as a matter of fact, not a really bad idea if we take account of this compromising situation of yours. I mean, look at you. Standing there, wounded, half naked, and pointing a gun at a countless amount of armed men." A messy cloud of laughter wafted across the crowd, Carl's jaw clenched.

She was right. The boy stood almost completely undressed. Only, he still wore loose white shorts to cover his privates— Fortunately. Aside from the light garment, every bit of skin was free, brightly exposed to the sunlight just as the thin tail of a thread vibrating randomly from his half sutured injury with deep crimson dribbling out of it. "If I were you, I'd rather die pronto than feeling any embarrassment for one more min—"

"Hey! Spill the beans, would you?" A man groaned ceasing the endless monologue. More chuckles were caught into the breezy air.

"Or," She raised her voice in response. A lull hung in the air and Carl felt a presence skirting around him so slowly that each time her sole met the floor, anxiety vibrated in his flesh like ants and spider were crawling underneath the sheet of his bones.

His clutch around the grip of the gun tightened, excessive moist issuing from his palm and fingers.

He had now the stark end of an arrow glaring directly at him. The string of the bow she held was roughly drawn back to her cheek. Thick strands of hair trailed and bounced randomly over her forehead in inky serpent coils as she stepped before the boy.

His brain was a mush of flesh. A bubble of pain and enervation and pique commenced to swell to the front area of his skull. Like thin and invisible threads pinned to each commissure of her lips were being manipulated, her mouth stretched upward into a contumelious grin.

She opened her mouth to speak and the bubble solidified within his cerebrum.

"Second option. We can go back upstairs, patch you up, give you some water and get you some clothes to put on, in order to —perhaps — save the tiny bits of amour propre you've got left." She had still that sardonic smirk plastered over her face; the kind one that could turned a nice, good— natured dude into an enraged being filled with unexpected animosity.

God, he wanted to get rid of that grin.

Carl stared at her eyes that aimed at him. Their profound and dark shade boring into his own and squinting with pure concentration as if she were adjusting a marble sculpture; thinking about what part of his face she would have to chisel, hammer, mark to make her carving bloodily perfect.

"Fair enough?" She asked and finally lowered her weapon. The girl's immodest composure metamorphosed into a serious frown as she patiently waited for Carl to do the same. Scrambling to his bare feet, his lonely orb trailed briefly across dozens and dozens of unfamiliar faces. His grip around the weapon slackened clashing on the ground.

With resignation and exhaustion, he looked up to the girl as she wrapped her bow around her and cautiously bent down grabbing the gun in her hands.

A suffocating mist of stillness swimming in the air and static stuck in his ear.

A sensation enfolded in his middle. Carl staggered backward. He didn't know whether it was the awkwardness of the situation taking effect inside of him or just the fist of the wind hitting his opened wound.

The instant he crouched on his knee, he knew what it was. Oh no, not again. The hideous movements of his uvula pendulating like a swing rammed forward by the wail of the brutal wind, made the imminent evacuation impossible to be held in check. The uncomfortable lump mounted up to his gullet in a broiling stampede of lava. And for the umpteenth time, he heaved ejecting a lumpy milkshake of blood and stomachic matters. Then, it sprayed onto the girl's feet that wore a pair of scruffy white Converse of which logo, and brilliance had partially faded.

Groans of disgust were heard, and an expression of terminate repugnance shadowed over her face as she kicked off the sick from the vamp of her shoes.

"You really need to use words if you're willing communicate with people."

°. ₊  *✧

"Water, please." He begged the girl sat across him as she took off her sneakers smeared with sour sick. The girl seemed definitely more concerned by the state of her (probably favorite) shoes than the teenager agonizing from dolor and dehydration just beside her.

He had first forgotten how thirsty he felt but it came back, galloping at a brisk pace. And now, he was lunging his arms — in a hideous gesture of supplication— toward a bottle tossed on the opposite bed.

All he could do was mewling for it, and implore her, since she had handcuffed him to the bedstead as soon as they came back into the room.

"The big guy, you stole the gun from it's Jones." She introduced putting the pair of Converse aside.

"The other man, it was Dr. Wilson."

"Please, the bottle..." His tongue felt thick, dry and the lack of saliva he produced, like wallpaper past.

This time, she heard him and lazily got on her feet to grab the bottle and searched through a drawer of the bedside table.

"With this." She said then handed him two pills and the bottle.

He seized the bottle and the pills eagerly. He couldn't care less if the capsules she gave him were gonna kill him or if he drown himself with an excessive sup. Drink— that's all he was asking for.

His tongue, his chest lauded at the shock of the water and he felt like tulips and lilacs were gloriously blossoming inside of him. Some beads were spilling down his jaw and onto his torso. She suddenly drew the bottle away from him causing the boy to hold his shaking hands out.

"It's empty." She pointed out coldly.

"So," she re-positioned herself on the edge of the mattress so that she was facing him, "you probably haven't saved any memories of what happened ?" He shrugged still enjoying the rush of water inside of him.

"Then I'll tell you what happened but for that you need to lie down so I can do you— your stitches, ugh?" She demanded.

"Carl" He said. 

"Yeah right." She murmured carelessly before averting her eyes down to his wound and Carl stiffly leaned down on the bed.

"What's yours?" It was spontaneous but his question soon followed with a heavy silence from the girl who quietly gathered tweezers and needles left on the bed.

He swallowed, taking the opportunity to study her features in greater depth.

Her hair, a ruffled slightly greasy mess, highlighted in caramel, mocha hues as it glowed underneath the sunlight that spilled through the panes and rusted bars of the window. Few kiss—curls peaked out from around her face with recklessness and spinning on themselves into endless, hypnotic spirals. Carl's blue one fixed them to a point he could sight the thick follicles gyrating into a looping motion. He grew dizzy, his head aching. 

He had to focus on another detail. A detail he had already noticed but never had the occasion to examine closely.

Her nose and left cheek bore two scars in the shape of a saw toothed scythe. The one on her cheek was viciously long and as dark as licorice. The skin around the deep crescent drawn a rolling field of rivulets curving from it. Those marks were broad and rough. Whoever or whatever had done this was heavy-handed and the injuries hadn't been properly stitched. 

He wasn't conscious about how indiscreet he was until she swiftly brought a thick strand of hair upon her cicatrix. He turned his head, facing the ceiling while trying to held back the shadow of a grimace.

"Y—your name?" He added thinking that she didn't hear him the first time. She lifted a brow at him and glanced down.

"Kaya."

A kiss of metal thrusting deep into the barrier topped over his flesh. He shuddered slightly. Tension oscillated through him like a string being stretched too suddenly. Rolling hills emerged out of his skin as strips of muscles protruded from his throat in response of the cold sensation stinging at his waist.

"I was looking for something I've lost when I— was on the road." She started. Carl focused onto the sound of her voice with the hope that it would help him to diminish the pain.

"That's when I saw you and a guy fighting against a group of crackfaces. You were struggling —pathetically— I tried to help you but one of them got you and you just shot me. Just a graze, nothing alarming." He winced as she pulled the thread too unkindly.

" I ran away leaving you and your friend alone. But then, you and your stubborn ass decided to come back a few hours later. I accidentally knocked you out and I had to bring you with me so Wilson could take care of you."

"Eights days followed — today —we were still waiting for you to wake up." She paused,  "I began to have some doubts when your heart went on a complete pause for a really long time especially after Wilson scre—" She cut her own words, looking off toward the barred window.

There was a queer interval of silence, and Carl stared down at her with confusion. Her hands had also lost the track of the work they were plunged in. Her eyes blinked, she was thinking. Then, slowly her face cleared.

Words restarted to flow back onto where they had stopped "...after Wilson screamed on every roof that you were dead. Today was the day we were supposed to bury you."

"My heart stopped? For how long?" He watched her tie a last knot.

"I know it's crazy but it's something that happens after the procedure." She said, cutting the excess thread before applying a large gauze onto the sutured wound.

"The procedure?" He asked, redressing himself from the mattress.

"The surgery. Consists in getting rid of a good amount of infected tissues, plunge the subject into some sort of death like trance for not more than five days and see how things happen. The heart slows and can comes to a halt for a small period and eventually reboots."

"Eventually. Wilson thinks it helps to reset the immune system. But the worst part comes after. Because the infection is still present, tougher, but slower."

" 'Seems like you know what you're talking about." Carl remarked, rubbing the dolor that throbbed inside his head in spite of the medication.

"I've watched him, multiple times." She shrugged glancing down at her feet dangling off the edge of the bed.

"How many survived?"

She froze, biting the inside of her cheek, uneasy.

"There... was this guy four months ago." She rambled, "He lasted a couple of weeks after the procedure and died because of the fever." The drumming beat of his core plummeted into an indistinct ticking. The ticking of the clock counting every seconds of his life left.

"But that doesn't mean anything. You're the youngest, and the most sane male he got to operate on. Wilson is optimistic, he made a lot of progress since."

"Oh and that's supposed to make me feel better! There's no exception, when you're bit—" He shot sardonically before he was cut by the derailment of his own words. Crimson cough erupted from his chest. With a roll of the eyes, Kaya reached under the bed pulling out a bucket. He seized it roughly and rested the empty container on his lap as he spat blood in it.

"I'm not in any way, shape or form trying to make you feel better. But your heart stopped beating for a period of time that is humanly speaking impossible." He looked up from the metallic container, staring at Kaya with disbelief "You were dead, you had enough time to turn but your body refused to." She leaned to catch his gaze.

"A week after the infection. Have you ever seen someone bitten, survived that amount of time ? You should thank me because if I wasn't there convincing Jones not to put you out of your misery, you'd be underground—"

She was interrupted by ironic chuckles reeling off of Carl's lips.

"I should, thank you?" His lips pressed together into a wrinkled line of terminal hatred. "For what? Dragging me in here, experimenting on me as if I were some kind of lab rat ?".

"Did I mention ungrateful behaviour was a side effect ?" Carl's eye smoldered into fires of fury sending daggers to the narrowed gap of her lids. Queerly, all the physical pain that once lanced through his bloodstream had dissipated. There was instead an unintelligible whirl rumbling inward. Maybe it was the medications working on him. No. Medications mean to ease the pain. In Carl's case it wasn't, just swept away. Like annoying moths swirling around the light glaring from a lantern and being shooed away by a compulsive movement of hands.

And that movement —here— was one of; "Anger too. Because that's what the handcuffs are for." She added bluntly. It was the icing on the cake; he felt the final burning drop that broke the glass, sending a paroxysm of blinding—hot tantrum through his system.

"I'm gonna show you what the handcuffs are for."

In a flash, he had seized onto the threadbare fabric of the jacket she wore. With a harsh ferocity, he dragged her forward so that their noses were grazing dangerously.

"Let go, you stupid asshole or—"

"Or else what? You're gonna kill me?" A dry chuckle puffed out of his throat like toxic smoke. Then, there was a sharp breath. The cold, incredulous laugh dwindled into inward whimpers. He let her go. The hue of his orbit began to gleam in trembling shimmers."I'm already dead, you and your people just postponed the inevitable."

Kaya watched him, as he slumped his back against the headboard; chin quivering like a small child who had been victim of unfair treatments.

 "I didn't even get to tell them goodbye." A tear menaced to course down his cheeks, but he wiped his eye "This is your fault. You ruined it. You ruined everything. Don't count on me to thank you for that."

There was a long pause between them.

She stood up. Her face, a blurry TV screen that displayed not even a single vibrant pixel of emotion.

"I told you back there not to follow me. Now every thing is up to you. Either you choose to die like the others or you try not to." She took the bucket from him. She set it on the ground before stepping toward the door.  "You sleep on your side and puke —not on the floor, not on yourself or on my toes — but inside that bucket."

▬▬▬▬▬ .｡.:*✧*:.｡. ▬▬▬▬▬

Oh and just, so that we
are clear: immunity or
finding  a cure bullsh*t
are not really the main
topic  of  this story. Of
course it'll be mentioned
but let's say that this is
bigger than that.

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